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Friday, May 15, 2015

Bob suggested I write up a set of Q & A for an advice column on PTSD
and try and sell it to a newspaper or something. It is really what I
love to do, but do I have the energy? It would be easy if someone else
came up with the questions... I have a blog at PatienceMason.blogspot.comhttp://www.patiencepress.com/pat…/PTSD_Help-For_Spouses.html and two other facebook pages, Patience H C Mason, Author and Recovering From the War.
Last Year in June (PTSD Month) I posted everyday here and cross posted to all of them. I think it helped some people. I keep directing people on some of the groups I belong to to http://www.patiencepress.com/pat…/PTSD_Help-For_Spouses.html
which also links to the stuff for kids, the Gazettes and various
essays. I have written so much on this subject and few people know, but I
really think my non-professional take on PTSD is way more helpful than
the way professionals look at it as a random collection of symptoms with
no rhyme or reason. I see it as survivor skills built into your brain
which are rapidly/instantly activated by war or abuse and which play out
in a logical order, hyperalertness and rapid adaptation leading to numbing and then avoidance, ending up with re-experiencing symptoms like
nightmares, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, anniversary reactions to
incidents you may or may not remember, one of the commonest causes for a
resurgence of PTSD symptoms.The other common cause for a resurgence is
a new stressor which, having been to war, may not seem like it ought to
bother you, but suddenly you are keyed up, angry etc. I'd be glad for suggestions or inspiration.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

When Bob got back from Vietnam
anyone who had problems was treated badly at the local VA where they were rude and dismissive. The diagnosis of PTSD did not exist. There was no treatment except valium, and he was told to take all he wanted since it was the new wonder drug. He also drank heavily. The students at UF introduced him to pot.
Bob survived BECAUSE he had these three drugs to use. Not because he got help at the VA. Not because I helped him. Because drinking, smoking pot and taking lots of valium just kept him down to WIRED. He could not sleep. Sleeping pills kept him awake. He was irritable and angry a lot, numb a lot, but whatever he was, the pot HELPED.
It helped him and it helped me because it calmed him down.
I think it should be available to every veteran.

What I wrote Ted Yoho, a supposedly pro-vet Congressman in Florida: 'I happen to live with a vet who has PTSD and
who has suffered a lot as a result. I have written a book called
Recovering From The War and have a website on recovering from PTSD,
which involves different things for different people. http://www.patiencepress.com/patien…/PTSD_Help-Gazettes.html
I believe that with so many veterans killing themselves or hurting
their families with outbursts of anger etc, they should be provided with
something which will help them NOW, not
after weeks of therapy, if they can even be seen in the VA or find a
therapist who understands. Medications may help, but if they have bad
side effects, most vets won't take them and won't say they are not. They
give up. Pot just makes them feel better and it should be available.
For years after Vietnam, it was the only thing that helped my husband
and I was glad he had it. I know you won't agree, but I wanted to
let you know that you could have helped our veterans and you didn't. It
is not an ideal solution, but it is something that has helped many. " I wrote this when I signed a letter to Representative Yoho about the fact that VA doctors can't even talk to vets about pot, thanks to a recent vote. The letter came through the Drug Policy Alliancehttp://www.drugpolicy.org/

Friday, April 3, 2015

I love this poster. Wish IAVA knew that my website (patiencepress.com) exists with a lot of help on it. It is normal to be affected by what you live through! Different people need different things to get better. There is no pill for PTSD and no therapy that works for everyone (no matter how "evidence based").
The symptoms of PTSD all start in the primitive parts of the brain as
brain based survival skills: attention to threat leads to
hypervigilance; rapid adaptation to what's
happening leads to numbing and then avoidance to stay numb (including
alcoholism, drugs, and other addictive behaviors); and the brain's
better safe than sorry system, which does not speak English and can't
tell time (except when anniversaries roll around) tries to keep you
aware that the universe is a dangerous place with intrusive thoughts,
flashbacks, nightmares, and anniversary reactions. NORMAL, people! Not weak! Not weird! We are made to survive if possible.
Having PTSD is evidence that you have been through traumatic events and
also evidence of strength, courage, speed, luck, etc, and survival! I
am glad you lived through it and made it home.

Monday, January 19, 2015

This is a beautiful essay!

Do you still think of Vietnam?

by Kerry “Doc” Pardue
A couple of years ago someone asked me if I still thought about
Vietnam. I nearly laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking about
it? Every day for the past forty years, I wake up with it- I go to bed
with it. This was my response:
“Yeah, I think about it. I can’t stop thinking about it. I never
will. But, . I’ve also learned to live with it. I’m comfortable with the
memories. I’ve learned to stop trying to forget and learned to embrace
it. It just doesn’t scare me anymore.”
A lot of my “brothers” haven’t been so lucky. For them the memories
are too painful, their sense of loss too great. My sister told me of a
friend she has whose husband was in the Nam. She asks this guy when he
was there.
Here’s what he said, “Just last night.” It took my sister a while to
figure out what he was talking about. Just Last Night. Yeah, I was in
the Nam. When? Just last night, before I went to sleep, on my way to
work this morning, and over my lunch hour. Yeah, I was there
My sister says I’m not the same brother who went to Vietnam. My wife
says I won’t let people get close to me, not even her.They are probably
both right. Ask a vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why?
Because we were in the business of death, and death was with us all the
time. It wasn’t the death of, “If I die before I wake.” This was the
real thing. The kind boys scream for their mothers. The kind that
lingers in your mind and becomes more real each time you cheat it. You
don’t want to make a lot of friends when the possibility of dying is
that real, that close. When you do, friends become a liability.
A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan is dead. I put
him in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969. We’d been talking, only
a few minutes before he was shot, about what we were going to do when
we got back to the world. Now, this was a guy who had come in country
the same time as me. A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue
eyes and sandy blond hair.
When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. I loved this guy like the
brother I never had. But, I screwed up. I got too close to him. I broke
one of the unwritten rules of war. DON”T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE
GOING TO DIE. You hear vets use the term “buddy” when they refer to a
guy they spent the war with. “Me and this buddy of mine.”
Friend sounds too intimate, doesn’t it? “Friend” calls up images of
being close. If he’s a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he dies,
and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close; get hurt.
It’s as simple as that. In war you learn to keep people at that distance
my wife talks about. You become good at it, that forty years after the
war, you still do it without thinking. You won’t allow yourself to be
vulnerable again.
My wife knows two people who can get into the soft spots inside me-my
daughters. I know it bothers her that they can do this.It’s not that I
don’t love my wife. I do. She’s put up with a lot from me.She’ll tell
you that when she signed for better or worse, she had no idea there was
going to be so much of the latter. But with my daughters it’s different.
My girls are mine. They’ll always be my kids. Not marriage, not
distance, not even death can change that.They are something on this
earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong to them. Nothing
can change that. I can have an ex-wife; but my girls can never have an
ex-father. There’s the differance. I can still see the faces, though
they all seem to have the same eyes. When I think of us, I always see a
line of “dirty grunts”sitting on a paddy dike. We’re caught in the first
gray silver between darkness and light. That first moment when we know
we’ve survived another night, and the business of staying alive for one
more day is about to begin. There was so much hope in that brief space
of time. It’s what we used to pray for. “One more day, God. One more
day.”
And I can hear our conversations as if they’d only just been spoken I
still hear the way we sounded. The hard cynical jokes, our morbid
senses of humor. We were scared to death of dying, and tried our best
not to show it.
I recall the smells, too. Like the way cordite hangs on the air after
a fire-fight. Or the pungent odor of rice paddy mud. So different from
the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient, somehow. Like
it’s always been there. And I’ll never forget the way blood smells,
sticky and drying on my hands. I spent a long night that way once. The
memory isn’t going anywhere.
I remember how the night jungle appears almost dreamlike as pilot of a
Cessna buzzez overhead, dropping parachute flares until morning. That
artificial sun would flicker and make shadows run through the jungle. It
was worse than not being able to see what was out there sometimes. I
remember once looking at the man next to me as a flare floated overhead.
The shadows around his eyes were so deep that it looked like his eyes
were gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm; without looking at
me he touched my hand. “I know man. I know.” That’s what he said. It
was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home and scared to death.
God, I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all
did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay disconnected, we
couldn’t help ourselves. I know why Tim O’ Brien writes his stories. I
know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to create poems so honest I cry
at their horrible beauty. It’s love. Love for those guys we shared the
experience with.
We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to
become as hard as our surroundings.You want to know what is frightening.
It’s a nineteen-year-old-boy who’s had a sip of that power over life
and death that war gives you. It’s a boy who, despite all the things
he’s been taught,knows that he likes it. It’s a nineteen-year-old who’s
just lost a friend, and is angry and scared and, determined that,
“some*@#*s gonna pay”.To this day, the thought of that boy can wake me
from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling.
As I write this, I have a picture in front of me. It’s of two young
men. On their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both stare
without expression at the camera. They’re writing letters. Staying in
touch with places they rather be. Places and people they hope to see
again. The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife.. She
doesn’t mind. She knows she’s been included in special company. She
knows I’ll always love those guys who shared that part of my life, a
part she never can. And she understands how I feel about the ones I know
are out there yet. The ones who still answer the question, “When were
you in Vietnam?”
“Hey, man. I was there just last night.”
~Kerry “Doc” Pardue

About Me

I'm the wife of a Vietnam vet, Robert Mason, who wrote the book, Chickenhawk, a memoir of his tour as a helicopter pilot, who came home with PTSD. 51st anniversary on Dec 2. We have been through a lot. Recovering from the War is the book I wrote when we found out about PTSD. I continue to write about it. I am also working at writing fantasy and scifi for young adults and picture books.

Welcome to my Blog on PTSD

My blog is intended to help you find help for yourself, whether it is you or your spouse that has PTSD.I have very decided opinions on what PTSD is, a collection of survivor skills that help you at the time of the trauma but can later become your biggest problems.I am glad to see attempts at resilience training in the military, but I tend to doubt that it actually prevents PTSD, especially since resilience has historically been a code word for workaholism, something psychiatrists tend not to notice.There is no one-size-fits-all treatment for PTSD, and although you may find a treatment which helps with all your most distressing symptoms, I prefer the word remission to the term cure, since as yet there are no 20 or 50 year follow up studies on any treatment. That way, if you find your symptoms returning when there is another war or other trauma, you know that what worked once will work again and you can go for more help.Research has shown that traumatic events are cumulative, starting in childhood, and the effects are worse when human cruelty, neglect, betrayal and indifference are part of it. PTSD is even worse when the institutions which are supposed to help you, practice cruelty, neglect, betrayal and indifference, as is happening a lot these days. It is just as bad as when a parent or spouse traumatizes someone.I will be blogging on things I have seen to be helpful.